And I completely disagree that there's no ongoing drama to the Super Bowl, as it is the culmination of the NFL Play-offs, which by themselves are enough of a cultural event. The Super Bowl is basically a guaranteed Game 7 every single year, a final, do or die, winner take all showdown for the championship. It's the same phenomenon that allows people to care about the NCAA Tournament stacked with schools, teams, players, etc. that they've never heard of. The drama of "one and done" allows casual viewers to tune in and get involved for a few hours one night. Asking casual viewers to tune in 4-7 nights over 5-9 days is just not a realistic. Baseball simply can't replicate that kind of drama, especially not when the series lasts 4 games because one team didn't even bother to show up to play.

The build up to the World Series you remember was mostly due to the fact that it was really the best vs. the best in a showdown. But the diluting of the leagues into divisions and the expansion of the playoffs has ruined that. Nobody who paid attention to baseball this season thinks the Giants or Tigers were really the best representatives of their leagues. They just happened to be the lucky bastards who were in the right spot at the right time. So you have to choose which is better, the artificial excitement and drama that the expanded playoffs and division chases cause (for example, the White Sox-Tigers chase that went down to the last week of the season would have been completely void without the divisional format, as either team would have been out of the playoff hunt by August) or forgoing all that to again make the World Series a truly "best of the best" representative event in which the AL's best plays the NL's best. But that seems to detract a lot more than it adds.

Your statement about the Super Bowl agrees with what I said about ongoing drama. The NFL markets it. MLB doesn't.

Your comments about the playoff expansion/format echo what I said earlier about having too many teams in the playoffs. While having so many teams in the playoffs is great for September ticket sales and media ratings, it is killing the postseason interest.

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Things that make you go "Hmmmmm:" Aaron Rowand and Kris Bryant have never been seen in the same room at the same time.
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